Meanwhile, in this week’s European politics

If you enjoy reading Brussels Playbook, please share it with your colleagues and friends. They can subscribe free here.

A LOST CONTINENT REDISCOVERS ITS MOJO: As a political car-crash unfolds in slow motion in the dis-United Kingdom, the rest of the EU appears strong and stable in a way it hasn’t since 2008, Matthew Karnitschnig writes. With positive economic signs, plans for a common defense and a united front on Brexit, the Continent is getting its mojo back.

IN TOWN: Zoran Zaev, prime minister of Macedonia, is in town to meet European Council President Donald Tusk, EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini and European Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn.

POLITICO EXCLUSIVE — TIME TO TEAR DOWN OR PATCH UP EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: Playbook’s colleague Florian Eder has this scoop: The European Parliament’s executive committee — the “bureau” — will tonight discuss whether to repair or tear down and replace the Paul-Henri Spaak building, which includes Parliament’s Brussels “Hemicycle” chamber. The building currently doesn’t meet European safety standards. Klaus Welle, the Parliament’s secretary-general, wrote a confidential memo in May to MEPs pushing them to approve a €430-million rebuild, arguing that “reflects the real institutional ambitions” and “answers the serious security matters relating to the structural stability of the building.”

PARLIAMENT — NEXT STEPS FOR COMMISSIONER-DESIGNATE MARIYA GABRIEL HEARING: The Bulgarian MEP designated to become the new European commissioner for the digital single market has until June 15 to answer questions from MEPs (link for POLITICO Pro Tech subscribers).
PARLIAMENT — PLENARY WEEK STARTS IN STRASBOURG: Full agenda here.
COMMISSION — GOOGLE D-DAY LOOMS: Bloomberg’s Aoife White explores what the impending Google decision could mean in terms of numbers, transatlantic relations and penalties. “With one eye on the impending decision, some Google officials have been getting ready, moving vacation dates or making sure they are close to the action,” White writes.

**A message from the EPP Group: This is a week of good news! Roaming charges are finally a thing of the past and the most successful EU program, Erasmus, celebrates its 30th anniversary. Parliament will also pass new energy-labeling rules and agree on the second pillar of the Paris agreement for greenhouse gas emission reductions. Read more.**

COUNCIL — AGRICULTURE MINISTERS MEET TODAY: Ministers will exchange views on organic production and labeling of organic products.
NATO — MORE ON THE TRUMP TIRADE AT NATO DINNER IN BRUSSELS: Including claims that other leaders were told they were lucky it was a 2 percent target, because U.S. President Donald Trump is reported to have said the goal should be 3 percent.

ICYMI — JUNCKER’S DEFENSE SPEECH: The European Commission president painted in Prague a stark and dark portrait of modern-day security threats.

FRENCH ELECTION …
Macron set for unenthused landslide: President Emmanuel Macron’s party La République en Marche could gain as many as 455 seats out of 577 after a runoff election June 18, after scoring 32 percent of the votes in Sunday’s first round voting. If that were the case, even minority factions within Macron’s party would be bigger than the next largest party, Les Républicains. Full map of how France’s 577 constituencies voted here.
Turnout below 50 percent: That’s significantly down from 2012’s 57 percent. Turnout is usually this low only for European elections — 42 percent in 2014.

Election takeaways: Pierre Briançon and Nicholas Vinocur write that rumors of the death of France’s two main political parties were not exaggerated. Rivals including the far-right Marine Le Pen and far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon took advantage of the low turnout to claim Macron does not have a strong mandate. Until voters choose them over Macron, it’s a moot point.
Biggest losers: Presidential candidate Benoît Hamon, trade and interior minister Matthias Fekl, Green leader Cécile Duflot, former Socialist Party President Jean-Claude Cambadélis, and MEPs Dominique Bilde, Nicolas Bay, and Mylène Troszczynski.

ITALIAN ELECTION — 5STARS SUFFER SETBACK IN LOCAL BALLOTS: Italy’s populists failed to gain ground in mayoral elections held in around 1,000 towns and small cities across the country, but it was a relatively good day for former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party.

THERESA MAY’S ZOMBIE GOVERNMENT …
Europe’s political attention has been glued to London for all the wrong reasons over the weekend: because the country’s election fallout resembles a car crash.
After a reshuffle to fill 12 ministerial vacancies including three cabinet posts, May ultimately changed very little despite the huge implications of her lost parliamentary majority. Gavin Barwell, a former housing minister and Remain supporter, is her new chief of staff. Damian Green, a close May ally and Remain supporter, is now the effective deputy prime minister. Green takes the title of first secretary of state and minister for the Cabinet Office. Michael Gove, the former justice secretary May sacked last year, returns to the cabinet as environment secretary. Gavin Williamson is charged with whipping government MPs into line. The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson writes the PM is now a prisoner of her own cabinet.

Must read — Political obituary for Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill: Written by Katie Perrior, May’s former communications chief. “The chiefs treated cabinet members exactly the same — rude, abusive, childish behavior. For two people who have never achieved elected office, I was staggered at the disrespect they showed on a daily basis.” Listen to Perrior on BBC radio.

BoJo a go-go: Many MPs say Boris Johnson is organizing to challenge May, despite backing her both in internal Conservative WhatsApp messages and in public. Read the WhatsApp messages first reported by ITV.

How May lost it: Tom McTague, Charlie Cooper and Annabelle Dickson have the definitive account of how it all went wrong for May. “Without a domestic opposition, as Corbyn was given up for dead by the media, May invented one: Brussels … As the campaign progressed, the messaging that had been so strong at the start started to come off as more negative, uninspiring and unceasingly repetitive. … Labour, on the other hand, tried throughout to shift the conversation to austerity.”

** WATCH LIVE on June 26 from 8:30 a.m. CET, POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook Breakfast with General Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee. The event is invitation-only. If you wish to request an invitation please email events@politico.eu. Find out more on our website. **

THE BREXIT CONSEQUENCES …

‘It’s like waiting for Godot’: Brexit negotiations are due to start in seven days but no one in Brussels has a clue how that’s going to work. European leaders and European Council officials doubt Britain will be in a position to start negotiating June 19, and don’t trust the new government is strong and stable, to borrow its own slogan. “It’s like waiting for Godot,” said one senior official who expressed a widely-held belief that May has “lost control over her own government.” Brussels, for its part, doesn’t care. More from Charlie Cooper and Playbook.
May’s trust problem: Tomas Prouza, until recently the Czech secretary of state for European affairs, reflected a view shared by many who were unwilling to go on the record. Prouza told Playbook that “any negotiation is almost pointless at the moment” because “nobody has any idea what [May] wants and nobody trusts her.”
Risky business: “The chances of a crash have actually gone up considerably as May is now much less likely to be able to sign up to any compromise,” one Brexit negotiator told the Times’ Bojan Pancevski and Michael Sheridan.
Philip Hammond, father of the soft Brexit? Bloomberg reported Hammond is leading the charge for a softer Brexit, with some members wanting the U.K. in the EU’s customs union and possibly the single market. The problem for May: If the U.K. stays in the customs union it cannot negotiate bilateral trade deals with countries like the U.S. and China (so that’s the Global Britain strategy up in flames), and if U.K. stays in the single market it cannot limit free movement of EU citizens (and that’s “take back control” of borders up in flames).
No friends for the DUP in Brussels: Who are the Democratic Unionists set to prop up the U.K.’s government? They’re the equivalent of Poland’s Law and Justice party, so the cold reactions Playbook received when mentioning the party should come as no surprise. A typical response from a senior EU official: “Everybody is wondering what the support of the lunatics of the DUP will mean.”
Playbook analysis — May won’t jump, and is trapped: May protected her own job for seven years, no matter the crosswinds. Though many of her staff realized weeks ago she was the principal problem with the Conservative campaign, it’s clear May will have to be dragged out of Downing Street by her opponents. The minimal cabinet reshuffle, the resignations of her key aides and the defiant Friday speech: none of it points to May admitting weakness or taking responsibility. In the meantime, she is trapped between another election she could lose outright and being held hostage by any small group of her own MPs or the DUP, if they are dissatisfied with her positions.

BREXIT REALITIES …

What the DUP manifesto said about Brexit: It wants a “frictionless” border with Ireland and maintenance of the common travel area with the U.K., reports Brexit Central.
Smart read — The 3 negotiating mistakes the UK has been making: Smartest thing Playbook read all weekend, by Oxford University’s Ngaire Woods in Project Syndicate.
EU chuckles at May’s misfortune, braces for trouble: There was Schadenfreude, for sure, but no trash talk — not yet, as Brussels took in the U.K. news.

THE SECOND LAYER OF UK ELECTION TAKEAWAYS …

Tories retoxified: After David Cameron spent a decade trying to detoxify the Tory brand among the young, the North and the cosmopolitan, May’s DUP deal is set to make it a party non grata in these circles. The flashpoint issues will be LGBT rights and abortion access. Ruth Davidson, one of the few successful Tories from the election, has a template for dealing with that.

Entitlement never pays: If you’re going to act like you’re entitled to power, you had better be very competent, very charismatic or both. May is neither, but she is inflexible and formulaic. We’ve been here before, writes Mary Ann Sieghart, recalling Hillary Clinton.

Politics no longer a luxury: If in the recent past young Britons and centrists took politics for granted by not showing up to vote, retiring their activism, or by giving their votes to protest parties, the election has jolted these forces back to life. Politics is once again necessary.
Brexodus accelerated: Rather than scramble their Brexit contingency plans, many London bankers may decamp to the Continent sooner rather than later, reports Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli.

By the numbers: Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn now have equal standing in preferred prime minister polls, while Labour is ahead of the Conservatives at party level. Almost two-thirds of Conservative Party members believe May should resign as Tory leader, according to a survey by Conservative Home.

TRUMP STATE VISIT TO UK NOT POSTPONED: The British PM’s office denied reports that emerged over the weekend claiming Trump’s state visit to the U.K. had been postponed.

PORTUGAL — HOW MUCH HAPPINESS IS TOO MUCH? Two-thirds of Portuguese say they are happy with their life, double the number from four years ago. The Socialist coalition government is also riding a wave of growth and other positive statistics. The small country even won Eurovision for the first time in 2017. But a backlash amid all this good news is growing nonetheless, reports Paul Ames.

FINLAND — TRUE FINNS PICK HARDLINE MEP AS CHAIRMAN: The Euroskeptic party, which is part of Finland’s governing coalition, on Saturday elected as its chairman MEP Jussi Halla-aho, who wants Finland to leave the EU.

REAL EUROPE: Greek mine collapses, forcing village to finally evacuate six years after plan to do so.

WHAT LATVIANS ARE TALKING ABOUT: Jelena Ostapenko, their new French Open tennis champion. It might not match Rafael Nadal’s 10 titles at Roland Garros, but Ostapenko, who just turned 20, became the first unseeded women’s champion at the tournament since 1933.

UKRAINE’S PASSPORT NOW MORE POWERFUL THAN RUSSIA’S: With Ukrainians now able to travel visa-free to the EU for 90 days or less, Passport Index says Ukraine’s passport power will jump to 32nd place from 50th worldwide. Ukrainians have visa-free access to 109 countries, whereas Russians have access to 106.

BRUSSELS CORNER …

REPORTERS’ GUIDE TO THE EU: This is a handbook for journalists by Sigrid Melchior, now available online.

MARRIED: Two Commission spokespeople, Annika Breidthardt and Daniel Rosario, in Portugal on Saturday.

**A message from the EPP Group: Almost 1.3 million young people have taken part in the Erasmus exchange program since it started in 1987. The European Parliament will celebrate this great European success with an award ceremony on Tuesday in the hemicycle for 33 Erasmus participants — one for each participant country. The success story now goes on under the new name Erasmus+, launched in 2014, as the EU is passing on the European idea not only to students, but to numerous other target groups. Our Member Milan Zver, author of the implementation Report for Erasmus+, says we have to improve the quality and visibility of the program to get as many young people as possible enthusiastic about Europe: “We are living in historical times! It is of paramount importance that young people not only read about Europe, but experience it! Therefore Erasmus+ is the best investment in the future of Europe!”**
SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: Morgen Europa | Brexit Files | Sunday Crunch | Brussels Influence | D.C. Playbook | All our POLITICO Pro policy morning newsletters